Part 22

Purdee, sitting silently smoking, glanced up at the noise. Abner took advantage of the momentary notice to claim, too, the attention of his mother. "I wish ye'd make Eunice quit talkin' 'bout the Grinnell's old baby, like she war actially demented--uglies' bald-headed, slab-sided, slobbery old baby I ever see--nare tooth in its head! I do despise them Grinnells."

As he anticipated, his father spoke suddenly: "Ye jes keep away from thar," he said, sternly. "I trest them folks no furder 'n a rattlesnake."

"_I_ ain't consortin' along o' 'em," declared the boy. "But I actially hed ter take Eunice by the scalp o' her head an' lug her off one day when she hung on thar fence a-stare-gazin' Grinnell's baby like 'twar fitten ter eat."

The child's mother, a cadaverous, pale woman, was listlessly stringing the warping-bars with hanks of variegated yarn. The grandmother, who conserved a much more active and youthful interest in life, took down a brown gourd used as a scrap-basket that was on a protruding lath of the clay-and-stick chimney, and hunted among the scraps of homespun and bits of yarn stowed within it. The room was much like the gourd in its aged brown tint; its indigenous aspect, as if it had not been made with hands, but was some spontaneous production of the soil; with its bits of bright color--the peppers hanging from the rafters, the rainbow-hued yarn festooning the warping-bars, the red coals of the fire, the blue and yellow ware ranged on the shelf, the brown puncheon floor and walls and ceiling and chimney--it might have seemed the interior of a similar gourd of gigantic proportions. She dressed a twig from the pile of wood in a gay scrap of cloth, casting glances the while at the little girl, and handed it to her.

"I hain't never seen ez good a baby ez this," she said, with the convincing coercive mendacity of a grandmother.

The little girl accepted it humbly; it was a good baby doubtless of its sort, but it was not alive, which could not be denied of the Grinnell baby, Grinnell though it was.

"An' Job Grinnell he kem down ter the fence, an' 'lowed he'd slit our ears, an' named us shoats," continued her brother. Purdee lifted his head. "An' sent a word ter dad," said the boy, tremulously.

"What word did he send ter--_me_?" cried Purdee.

The boy quailed to tell him. "He tole me ter ax ye ef ye ever read sech ez this on Moses' tables in the mountings--'An' ye shell claim sech ez be yer own, an' yer neighbors' belongings shell ye in no wise boastfully medjure fur yourn, nor look upon it fur covetiousness, nor yit git a big name up in the kentry fur ownin' sech ez be another's,'" faltered the sturdy Abner.

The next moment he felt an infinite relief. He suddenly recognized the fact that he had been chiefly restrained from repeating the words by an unrealized terror lest they prove true--lest something his father claimed was not his, indeed.

But the expression of anger on Purdee's face was merged first in blank astonishment, then in perplexed cogitation, then in renewed and overpowering amazement.

The wife turned from the warping-bars with a vague stare of surprise, one hand poised uncertainly upon a peg of the frame, the other holding a hank of "spun truck." The grandmother looked over her spectacles with eyes sharp enough to seem subsidized to see through the mystery.

"In the name o' reason and religion, Roger Purdee," she adjured him, "what air that thar perverted Philistine talkin' 'bout?"

"It air more'n I kin jedge of," said Purdee, still vainly cogitating.

He sat for a time silent, his dark eyes bent on the fire, his broad, high forehead covered by his hat pulled down over it, his long, tangled, dark locks hanging on his collar.

Suddenly he rose, took down his gun, and started toward the door.

"Roger," cried his wife, shrilly, "I'd leave the critter be. Lord knows thar's been enough blood spilt an' good shelter burned along o' them Purdees' an' Grinnells' quar'ls in times gone. Laws-a-massy!"--she wrung her hands, all hampered though they were in the "spun truck"--"I'd ruther be a sheep 'thout a soul, an' live in peace."

"A sca'ce ch'ice," commented her mother. "Sheep's got ter be butchered. I'd ruther be the butcher, myself--healthier."

Purdee was gone. He had glanced absently at his wife as if he hardly heard. He waited till she paused; then, without answer, he stepped hastily out of the door and walked away.

* * * * *

The cronies at the blacksmith's shop latterly gathered within the great flaring door, for the frost lay on the dead leaves without, the stars scintillated with chill suggestions, and the wind was abroad on nights like these. On shrill pipes it played; so weird, so wild, so prophetic were its tones that it found only a shrinking in the heart of him whose ear it constrained to listen. The sound of the torrent far below was accelerated to an agitated, tumultuous plaint, all unknown when its pulses were bated by summer languors. The moon was in the turmoil of the clouds, which, routed in some wild combat with the winds, were streaming westward.

And although the rigors of the winter were in abeyance, and the late purple aster called the Christmas-flower bloomed in the sheltered grass at the door, the forge fire, flaring or dully glowing, overhung with its dusky hood, was a friendly thing to see, and in its vague illumination the rude interior of the shanty--the walls, the implements of the trade, the bearded faces grouped about, the shadowy figures seated on whatever might serve, a block of wood, the shoeing-stool, a plough, or perched on the anvil--became visible to Roger Purdee from far down the road as he approached. Even the head of a horse could be seen thrust in at the window, while the brute, hitched outside, beguiled the dreary waiting by watching with a luminous, intelligent eye the gossips within, as if he understood the drawling colloquy. They were suffering some dearth of timely topics, supplying the deficiency with reminiscences more or less stale, and had expected no such sensation as they experienced when a long shadow fell athwart the doorway,--the broad aperture glimmering a silvery gray contrasted with the brown duskiness of the interior and the purple darkness of the distance; the forge fire showed Purdee's tall figure leaning on the door-frame, and lighted up his serious face beneath his great broad-brimmed hat, his intent, earnest eyes, his tangled black beard and locks. He gave no greeting, and silence fell upon them as his searching gaze scanned them one by one.

"Whar's Job Grinnell?" he demanded, abruptly.

There was a shuffling of feet, as if those members most experienced relief from the constraint that silence had imposed upon the party. A vibration from the violin--a sigh as if the instrument had been suddenly moved rather than a touch upon the strings--intimated that the young musician was astir. But it was Spears, the blacksmith, who spoke.

"Kem in, Roger," he called out, cordially, as he rose, his massive figure and his sleek head showing in the dull red light on the other side of the anvil, his bare arms folded across his chest. "Naw, Job ain't hyar; hain't been hyar for a right smart while."

There was a suggestion of disappointment in the attitude of the motionless figure at the door. The deeply earnest, pondering face, visible albeit the red light from the forge-fire was so dull, was keenly watched. For the inquiry was fraught with peculiar meaning to those cognizant of the long and bitter feud.

"I ax," said Purdee, presently, "kase Grinnell sent me a mighty cur'ous word the t'other day." He lifted his head. "Hev enny o' you-uns hearn him 'low lately ez I claim ennything ez ain't mine?"

There was silence for a moment. Then the forge was suddenly throbbing with the zigzagging of the bow of the violin jauntily dandering along the strings. His keen sensibility apprehended the sudden jocosity as a jeer, but before he could say aught the blacksmith had undertaken to reply.

"Waal, Purdee, ef ye hedn't axed me, I warn't layin' off ter say nuthin 'bout'n it. 'Tain't no consarn o' mine ez I knows on. But sence ye _hev_ axed me, I hold my jaw fur the fear o' no man. The words ain't writ ez I be feared ter pernounce. An' ez all the kentry hev hearn 'bout'n it 'ceptin' you-uns, I dunno ez I hev enny call ter hold my jaw. The Lord 'ain't set no seal on my lips ez I knows on."

"Naw, sir!" said Purdee, his great eyes glooming through the dusk and flashing with impatience. "He 'ain't set no seal on yer lips, ter jedge by the way ye wallop yer tongue about inside o' 'em with fool words. Whyn't ye bite off what ye air tryin' ter chaw?"

"Waal, then," said the admonished orator, bluntly, "Grinnell 'lows ye don't own that thar lan' around them rocks on the bald, no more'n ye read enny writin' on 'em."

"Not them rocks!" cried Purdee, standing suddenly erect--"the tables o' the Law, writ with the finger o' the Lord--an' Moses flung 'em down thar an' bruk 'em. All the kentry knows they air Moses' tables. An' the groun' whar they lie air mine."

"'Tain't, Grinnell say 'tain't."

"Naw, sir," chimed in the young musician, his violin silent. "Job Grinnell declars he owns it hisself, an' ef he war willin' ter stan' the expense he'd set up his rights, but the lan' ain't wuth it. He 'lows his line runs spang over them rocks, an' a heap furder."

Purdee was silent; one or two of the gossips laughed jeeringly; he had been proved a liar once. It was well that he did not deny; he was put to open shame among them.

"An' Grinnell say," continued Blinks, "ez ye hev gone an' tole big tales 'mongst the brethren fur ownin' sech ez ain't yourn, an' readin' of s'prisin' sayin's on the rocks."

He bent his head to a series of laughing harmonics, and when he raised it, hearing no retort, the silvery gray square of the door was empty. He saw the moon glimmer on the clumps of grass outside where the Christmas-flower bloomed.

The group sat staring in amaze; the blacksmith strode to the door and looked out, himself a massive, dark silhouette upon the shimmering neutrality of the background. There was no figure in sight; no faint foot-fall was audible, no rustle of the sere leaves; only the voice of the mountain torrent, far below, challenged the stillness with its insistent cry.

He looked back for a moment, with a vague, strange doubt if he had seen aught, heard aught, in the scene just past. "Hain't Purdee been hyar?" he asked, passing his hand across his eyes. The sense of having dreamed was so strong upon him that he stretched his arms and yawned.

The gleaming teeth of the grouped shadows demonstrated the merriment evoked by the query. The chuckle was arrested midway.

"Ye 'pear ter 'low ez suthin' hev happened ter Purdee, an' that thar war his harnt," suggested one.

The bold young musician laid down his violin suddenly. The instrument struck upon a keg of nails, and gave out an abrupt, discordant jangle, startling to the nerves. "Shet up, ye durned squeech-owl!" he exclaimed, irritably. Then, lowering his voice, he asked: "Didn't they 'low down yander in the Cove ez Widder Peters, the day her husband war killed by the landslide up in the mounting, heard a hoe a-scrapin' mightily on the gravel in the gyarden-spot, an' went ter the door, an' seen him thar a-workin', an' axed him when he kem home? An' he never lifted his head, but hoed on. An' she went down thar 'mongst the corn, an' she couldn't find nobody. An' jes then the Johns boys rid up an' 'lowed ez Jim Peters war dead, an' hed been fund in the mounting, an' they war a-fetchin' of him then."

The horse's head within the window nodded violently among the shadows, and the stones rolled beneath his hoof as he pawed the ground.

"Mis' Peters she knowed suthin' were a-goin' ter happen when she seen that harnt a-hoein'."

"I reckon she did," said the blacksmith, stretching himself, his nerves still under the delusion of recent awakening. "Jim never hoed none when he war alive. She mought hev knowed he war dead ef she seen him hoein'."

"Waal, sir," exclaimed the violinist, "I'm a-goin' up yander ter Purdee's ter-morrer ter find out what he died of, an' when."

That he was alive was proved the next day, to the astonishment of the smith and his friends. The forge was the voting-place of the district, and there, while the fire was flaring, the bellows blowing, the anvil ringing, the echo vibrating, now loud, now faint, with the antiphonal chant of the hammer and the sledge, a notice was posted to inform the adjacent owners that Roger Purdee's land, held under an original grant from the State, would be processioned according to law some twenty days after date, and the boundaries thereof defined and established. The fac-simile of the notice, too, was posted on the court-house door in the county town twenty miles away, for there were those who journeyed so far to see it.

"I wonder," said the blacksmith, as he stood in the unfamiliar street and gazed at it, his big arms, usually bare, now hampered with his coat sleeves and folded upon his chest--"I wonder ef he footed it all the way ter town at the gait he tuk when he lit out from the forge?"

It was a momentous day when the county surveyor planted his Jacob's-staff upon the State line on the summit of the bald. His sworn chain-bearers, two tall young fellows clad in jeans, with broad-brimmed wool hats, their heavy boots drawn high over their trousers, stood ready and waiting, with the sticks and clanking chain, on the margin of the ice-cold spring gushing out on this bleak height, and signifying more than a fountain in the wilderness, since it served to define the southeast corner of Purdee's land. The two enemies were perceptibly conscious of each other. Grinnell's broad face and small eyes laden with fat lids were persistently averted. Purdee often glanced toward him gloweringly, his head held, nevertheless, a little askance, as if he rejected the very sight. There was the fire of a desperate intention in his eyes. Looking at his face, shaded by his broad-brimmed hat, one could hardly have doubted now whether it expressed most ferocity or force. His breath came quick--the bated breath of a man who watches and waits for a supreme moment. His blue jeans coat was buttoned close about his sun-burned throat, where the stained red handkerchief was knotted. He wore a belt with his powder-horn and bullet-pouch, and carried his rifle on his shoulder; the hand that held it trembled, and he tried to quell the quiver. "I'll prove it fust, an' kill him arterward--kill him arterward," he muttered.

In the other hand he held a yellowed old paper. Now and then he bent his earnest dark eyes upon the grant, made many a year ago by the State of Tennessee to his grandfather; for there had been no subsequent conveyances.

The blacksmith had come begirt with his leather apron, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and with his hammer in his hand, an inopportune customer having jeopardized his chance of sharing in the sensation of the day. The other neighbors all wore their coats closely buttoned. Blinks carried his violin hung upon his back; the sharp timbre of the wind, cutting through the leafless boughs of the stunted woods, had a kindred fibrous resonance. Clouds hung low far beneath them; here and there, as they looked, the trees on the slopes showed above and again below the masses of clinging vapors. Sometimes close at hand a peak would reveal itself, asserting the solemn vicinage of the place, then draw its veil slowly about it, and stand invisible and in austere silence. The surveyor, a stalwart figure, his closely buttoned coat giving him a military aspect, looked disconsolately downward.

"I hoped I'd die before this," he remarked. "I'm equal to getting over anything in nature that's flat or oblique, but the vertical beats me."

He bent to take sight for a moment, the group silently watching him. Suddenly he came to the perpendicular, and strode off down the rugged slope over gullies and bowlders, through rills and briery tangles, his eyes distended and eager as if he were led into the sylvan depths by the lure of a vision. The chain-bearers followed, continually bending and rising, the recurrent genuflections resembling the fervors of some religious rite. The chain rustled sibilantly among the dead leaves, and was ever and anon drawn out to its extremest length. Then the dull clank of the links was silent.

"Stick!" called out the young mountaineer in the rear.

"Stuck!" responded his comrade ahead.

And once more the writhing and jingling among the withered leaves. The surveyor strode on, turning his face neither to the right nor to the left, with his Jacob's-staff held upright before him. The other men trooped along scatteringly, dodging under the low boughs of the stunted trees. They pressed hastily together when the great square rocks--Moses' tables of the Law--came into view, lying where it was said the man of God flung them upon the sere slope below, both splintered and fissured, and one broken in twain. The surveyor was bearing straight down upon them. The men running on either side could not determine whether the line would fall within the spot or just beyond. They broke into wild exclamations.

"Ye may hammer me out ez flat ez a skene," cried the blacksmith, "ef I don't b'lieve ez Purdee hev got 'em."

"Naw, sir, naw!" cried another fervent amateur; "thar's the north. I jes now viewed Grinnell's dad's deed; the line ondertakes ter run with Purdee's line; he hev got seven hunderd poles ter the north; ef they air a-goin' ter the north, them tables o' the Law air Grinnell's."

A wild chorus ensued.

"Naw!" "Yes!" "Thar they go!" "A-bearin' off that-a-way!" "Beats my time!" as they stumbled and scuttled alongside the acolytes of the Compass, who bowed down and rose up at every length of the chain. Suddenly a cry from the chain-bearers.

"Out!"

Stillness ensued.

The surveyor stopped to register the "out." It was a moment of thrilling suspense; the rocks lay only a few chains further; Grinnell, into whose confidence doubt had begun to be instilled, said to himself, all a-tremble, that he would hardly have staked his veracity, his standing with the brethren, if he had realized that it was so close a matter as this. He had long known that his father owned the greater part of the unproductive wilderness lying between the two ravines; the land was almost worthless by reason of the steep slants which rendered it utterly untillable. He was sure that by the terms of his deed, which his father had from its vendor, Squire Bates, his line included the Moses' tables on which Purdee had built so fallacious a repute of holiness. He looked once more at the paper--"thence from Crystal Spring with Purdee's line north seven hundred poles to a stake in the middle of the river."

Purdee too was all a-quiver with eagerness. He had not beheld those rocks since that terrible day when all the fine values of his gifted vision had been withdrawn from him, and he could read no more with eyes blinded by the limitations of what other men could see--the infinitely petty purlieus of the average sense. He had a vague idea that should they say this was his land where those strange rocks lay, he would see again, he would read undreamed-of words, writ with a pen of fire. He started toward them, and then with a conscious effort he held back.

The surveyor took no heed of the sentiments involved in processioning Purdee's land. He stood leaning on his Jacob's-staff, as interesting to him as Moses' rocks, and in his view infinitely more useful, and wiped his brow, and looked about, and yawned. To him it was merely the surveying for a foolish cause of a very impracticable and steep tract of land, and the only reason it should be countenanced by heaven or earth was the fees involved. And this was what he saw at the end of Purdee's line.

Suddenly he took up his Jacob's-staff and marched on with a long stride, bearing straight down upon the rocks. The whole _cortege_ started anew--the genuflecting chain-bearers, the dodging, scrambling, running spectators. On one of the strange stunted leafless trees a colony of vagrant crows had perched, eerie enough to seem the denizens of those weird forests; they broke into raucous laughter--Haw! haw! haw!--rising to a wild commotion of harsh, derisive discord as the men once more gave vent to loud, excited cries. For the surveyor, stalking ahead, had passed beyond the great tables of the Law; the chain-bearers were drawing Purdee's line on the other side of them, and they had fallen, if ever they fell here from Moses' hand and broke in twain, upon Purdee's land, granted to his ancestor by the State of Tennessee.

He could not speak for joy, for pride. His dark eyes were illumined by a glancing, amber light. He took off his hat and smoothed with his rough hand his long black hair, falling from his massive forehead. He leaned against one of the stunted oaks, shouldering his rifle that he had loaded for Grinnell--he could hardly believe this, although he remembered it. He did not want to shoot Grinnell; he would not waste the good lead!

And indeed Grinnell had much ado to defend himself against the sneers and rebukes with which the party beguiled the way through the wintry woods. "Ter go a-claimin' another man's land, an' put him ter the expense o' processionin' it, an' git his line run!" exclaimed the blacksmith, indignantly. "An' ye 'ain't got nare sign o' a show at Moses' tables!"

"I dunno how this hyar line air a-runnin'," declared Grinnell, sorely beset. "I don't b'lieve it air a-runnin' north."

The surveyor was hard by. He had planted his staff again, and was once more taking his bearings. He looked up for a second.

"North_west_," he said.

Grinnell stared for a moment; then strode up to the surveyor, and pointed with his stubby finger at a word on his deed.

The official looked with interest at it; he held up suddenly Purdee's grant and read aloud, "From Crystal Spring seven hundred poles north_west_ to a stake in the middle of the river."

He examined, too, the original plat of survey which he had taken to guide him, and also the plat made when Squire Bates sold to Grinnell's father; "north_west_" they all agreed. There was evidently a clerical error on the part of the scrivener who had written Grinnell's deed.

In a moment the harassed man saw that through the processioning of Purdee's land he had lost heavily in the extent of his supposed possessions. He it was who had claimed what was rightfully another's. And because of the charge Purdee was the richer by a huge slice of mountain land--how large he could not say, as he ruefully followed the line of survey.